Generally, a plasma display panel (PDP) is a display device which excites phosphors with vacuum ultraviolet rays radiated from plasma obtained through gas discharging, and displays desired images by visible light generated by the excited phosphors. As the PDP enables a wide screen with a high resolution, it has been spotlighted as a future generation flat panel display.
Typically, a PDP is structured in a three-electrode surface discharge scheme. In this scheme, two electrodes are coplanarly formed on one substrate and address electrodes are formed on another substrate apart from the one substrate by a predetermined gap. Barrier ribs are formed between the two substrates so as to partition a plurality of discharge cells.
Conventionally, each PDP is manufactured separately, and resulting in an increase in production cost due to low productivity. Therefore, a multi-panel production technology is under development, wherein a plurality of PDPs are formed as substrates facing each other and then, the substrates are cut into individual PDPs.
Meanwhile, barrier ribs are typically formed by the following process. Firstly, a barrier rib layer and a resist are consecutively formed on a front surface of a substrate, and then the resist is patterned to a predetermined pattern using a mask. In this case, the resist is patterned to form openings corresponding to a discharge cell pattern. Subsequently, the barrier rib layer is etched according to the pattern of the resist and is then baked. At this time, the etched portion of the barrier rib layer is formed as a discharge space.
The barrier rib layer may be etched by a sandblast method, in which the barrier rib layer is applied with abrasives so as to etch portions that have not been formed with the resist.
Because PDPs are becoming larger and the PDPs are manufactured by multi-panel technology, the barrier rib layer may fail to be etched with sufficient uniformity. In particular, near the center of the substrate formed PDPs, the flow of abrasives may be blocked for various reasons and the barrier rib layer may not be sufficiently etched. Therefore, near the center of the substrate, barrier ribs are formed with greater width than other portions, and accordingly the discharge space becomes smaller.
Thereby, a uniformity of discharge voltage and brightness of the panel is deteriorated, and a stain of discharge may result deteriorating display characteristics.
The information disclosed in this Background of the Invention section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore, unless explicitly described to the contrary, it should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information constitutes a description of prior art that is already known to a person of ordinary skill in the art.